<?php
/**
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 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Better',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/07/08.jpg" alt="An insect camouflaged to the paint outside my apartment; seriously, I checked, the insect wasn&apos;t just painted over" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			What&apos;s particularly interesting about that fear, is that while there&apos;s plenty in the ocean that would do you harm, sharks will usually leave you alone.
			Humans don&apos;t tend to make good prey for sharks.
			I hear part of it is that our flesh is too salty for them.
			However, I suspect it also has to do with our size and that we&apos;re strange to them.
			A shark <strong>*could*</strong> rip one of us in half if it tried, but we&apos;re bigger than their typical prey, so there&apos;s that fear in them that we might put up a good fight.
			And in truth, some of us would.
			(If you&apos;re ever under attack by a shark, try punching their gills if you can.
			They&apos;re particularly vulnerable, a fact that dolphins have been known to take advantage of.)
			Also, we&apos;re foreign land animals.
			We&apos;re scary because they don&apos;t see us as often as they do their fellow fish, or even as often as they see sea mammals.
		</p>
		<p>
			I certainly wouldn&apos;t go provoking sharks, but they&apos;re not going to hurt you when you enjoy your time in the water as long as you leave them alone.
			They don&apos;t venture close to shore very often, either, so unless you take a boat out pretty far, you&apos;re not likely to encounter one.
		</p>
		<p>
			I guess movies like that one prey on our fear of the unknown.
			Like sharks and how we&apos;re strange land animals to them, they&apos;re strange sea animals to us.
			We don&apos;t see them as often as we see land animals such as ourselves.
			We don&apos;t know their behaviours; their temperament.
			All most of us know is their appearance, including those rows of sharp teeth.
			That, and their ability to smell blood from great distances.
			Now that&apos;s scary!
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="health">
	<h2>Mental well-being</h2>
	<p>
		I didn&apos;t feel like writing much in my journal yesterday, but I&apos;ve found I&apos;m actually starting to feel back to my old self.
		I mean, not my old, old self, but myself from a while after I moved here.
		I actually enjoyed working on coursework yesterday.
		I stayed up into the morning today working on an essay, actually going above and beyond the assigned work, just like I used to do every time.
		And after work, I completed the rest of the essay, which I thought would take me a few days more, originally.
		The way I see it, one of three things is the case:
	</p>
	<ul>
		<li>
			I&apos;m finally recovering some more from the school&apos;s attack on me.
			I&apos;ll gradually regain even more of my enthusiasm for coursework.
		</li>
		<li>
			Last week&apos;s study really helped me.
			I happened to study a philosophy that applies well to me and now I&apos;m feeling a bit less negativity toward life.
			While not related to my negativity toward this horrible university, the lessened stress is freeing up more capacity for processing the stress coming to me from attending this school.
			I won&apos;t likely see further improvement soon, but the current improvement in my enthusiasm is a welcome relief.
		</li>
		<li>
			I&apos;m having an off week.
			Some off weeks are negative compared to surrounding weeks, while others are positive.
			I&apos;m in a sort of reverse funk, and will be back to my usual dread soon.
		</li>
	</ul>
	<p>
		The latter seems objectively most likely, but at the same time, it doesn&apos;t feel like the latter in the moment.
		I&apos;m ... uncharacteristically optimistic, at the moment.
		Emotionally, I suspect last week&apos;s studies are the key to my better mood.
		The philosopher I looked at said that in the case of doubt, we should act as though our belief matches that which would get the best results from us.
		We can be better people even in the face of uncertainty.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
